Angel Uribe has heard stories from his uncle about how hard life can be working the fields as a stoop laborer.

Only recently has he realized how horrendous conditions were for farmworkers before Cesar Chavez fought for their rights.

“My uncle told me being a farmworker is too hard on a person,” said Angel, a sixth-grader at Roosevelt Middle School in San Diego. “It was worse before, you had to breathe the stuff they use to kill insects. There were no bathrooms. People had to share the same can to drink water and germs would spread.”

It will be 20 years next month since Cesar Chavez died. Yet the legacy of the late labor leader has perhaps never been more alive among many students in San Diego schools.

Angel is one of 600 Chavistas. They are members of 24 chapters of the Cesar Chavez Service Club that operate on campuses throughout the San Diego Unified School District.

The young activists get attention from the media and the public this time of year around Cesar Chavez Day, which commemorates his birthday, March 31. Some rallied with signs and banners last week at Chavez Elementary School in City Heights in a short re-enactment of the historic 1966 march that stretched some 300 miles from Delano to Sacramento to draw attention to the plight of farmworkers. Students also hosted the club’s fundraiser breakfast Thursday at the Jacobs Center for 800 residents and dignitaries.

But the true work of the Chavistas happens year-round, when fewer are watching.

“Cesar Chavez was never about doing anything for one day,” said Linda LeGerrette of San Diego, who with her husband Carlos worked closely with Chavez for 12 years during the movement that unionized farmworkers and improved working conditions. “Everything was about building for the next day and the next and the next.”

The LeGerrettes established the service clubs little over a decade ago with grant money distributed after then-Gov. Gray Davis authorized Cesar Chavez Day as a state holiday. Clubs sprouted up throughout California that largely promoted a single day of community service. The organizations mostly withered when the money dried up.

Under the subtle guidance of the LeGerrettes, San Diego’s clubs have steadily flourished like a well-tended crop. Carlos kept them going with financial support from another one of his mentors, the late Sol Price, founder of the Price Club (which later merged into Costco) and noted philanthropist. Other donors have followed. About four years ago, the organization established nonprofit status and a formal board of directors.

The Chavistas bring a new brand of community service to schools that for years have pushed civic responsibility with Key Club, scouting and other long-standing institutions.

These club members are taught to accomplish goals using 10 values that embody Chavez: Service to others, sacrifice, nonviolence, respect for life, celebrating community, determination, helping the needy, accepting of all people, and knowledge and innovation. They take on projects and issues with collaboration and compromise.

Any student who wants to join the club must first “register” to vote, filling out a form that resembles the real deal. The idea is to prepare them for a lifetime of civic participation.

Most members meet after school or during lunch with one of a handful of club coordinators, volunteers, college students and retired educators. Some middle schools incorporate the clubs into Spanish classes. Each chapter is governed by five elected student officers who lead meetings using agendas and protocols similar to those employed by city councils or school boards.

“They will be able to go to any public meeting anywhere and look for the agenda and know when to speak,” Carlos LeGerrette said. “The whole point is to inspire youngsters to believe in themselves and to know they can make a difference. That means participating, which in real life means registering to vote and speaking up for what you believe in.”

The students have ventured out into the community, planting trees, picking up litter and feeding the hungry alongside their counterparts in other more-established civic-minded organizations around San Diego.

But those are just “activities. The real work is here,” Carlos said, tapping his forehead.

At last week’s Cesar Chavez Service Clubs’ annual Las Mañanitas Breakfast and fundraiser, several Chavistas moved many in the audience of 800 to tears with testimonials about how their participation on the program has helped in school and in life.

Carlos LeGerrette sees himself in many of the Chavistas. A native San Diegan, he was “inches” away from dropping out of Point Loma High School after his own parents split up. After earning his diploma in 1961, LeGerrette went to live with family in Salinas, where his cousins worked in the fields under awful conditions.

Back in San Diego, Linda LeGerrette attended Mesa College after graduating Madison High School. She helped organize caravans to the Central Valley to deliver clothes and food to farm workers.

The two married in 1966 and joined Chavez’ “La Causa.” She first met Price when she attempted to remove grapes from a FedMart — also founded by Price — during the grape strike. Price sympathized with the struggle and agreed to ban California table grapes from his markets and established a long friendship with the LeGerrettes that continued until his death in 2009.

The LeGerrettes say they strive to inspire students and motivate them the way Chavez, Price and Gov. Jerry Brown have motivated them.

In the 1970s after working for a dozen years with Chavez, including time as his assistant during the heat of the United Farm Workers movement, Carlos managed then-gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown’s campaign in San Diego, becoming his special affairs assistant in charge of the San Diego, Imperial Valley, Riverside and Orange County areas. He continued to work for Brown after the election.

San Diego Unified has been supportive of the clubs. School board trustee Richard Barrera is a member of the nonprofit’s governing board.

Several schools have asked how they can start their own chapter of the club and Barrera is hopeful the organization can raise the money necessary to make the program available to every campus in the district.

“We’ve got something special that was started by a couple of inspirational founders,” said Barrera, who is a professional community organizer. “The question becomes, how do we expand it so that we don’t lose what it is all about?”